>I am not the kind of person who thinks AI will replace actors blah blah blah. But I am glad these tools exist, because this video wouldn’t exist without AI.
>In no world would I ever have put together a real cast and crew to remake a 15 year old inside joke video for Googlers, but I was able to make it with AI.
BUT IT DID !! and part of the charm is that this involved real people talking, mutual understanding and a shared culture.
That world existed it can still exist unless we surrender to the depravity of conformity and comfortability.
In fact, the overtly robotic voices added to the humor of the original, IMO. It was lost in this translation.
mbleigh 9 hours ago [-]
FWIW I actually agree that the original is funnier in its delivery!
boplicity 18 hours ago [-]
So much of what makes people willing to be moved by creative art is the willingness to believe they're investing in someone else's real thoughts & effort -- and opening themselves to a channel of real human connection & relationship.
AI has raised the bar, in terms of making it more difficult to create the trust necessary for people to be willing to open themselves up to that connection.
srean 14 hours ago [-]
Now if future AIs were shown to be capable of suffering then this could change.
shadowgovt 16 hours ago [-]
The original video existed because Xtranormal.com lets you transform a written script into an auto-generated scene with procedurally-puppeted wireframed stock models and text-to-speech voice acting.
Any assertion that the world in which Broccoli Man was created was fundamentally different (in terms of "relying on someone else's framework to do a low-effort meme") from today is nostaglia. In fact, I suspect mbleigh spent more time on making the recreation work than was spent on the original Broccoli Man video.
fuzzy_biscuit 10 hours ago [-]
I think calling it nostalgia is a bit too charitable. I see it more as a delusion.
xgulfie 9 hours ago [-]
ugh but that requires like, effort
graypegg 16 hours ago [-]
> In no world would I ever have put together a real cast and crew [...]
3 people, the phone with the best camera across those 3 people, and some costumes that aren't THAT had to recreate? Honestly could even skip the costumes and just print out two A4 sheets with orange bamboo shoots and broccoli and tape them to your shirt and I would honestly get a better kick out of that. It's fun to make stuff with friends, even if it's a bit crap!
Saying that, I don't think anyone making something with AI discourages anyone else from doing something with the joke, so I think all this has really replaced is a video the author would not have made otherwise... but they should try anyway! They're missing out on what would be a fun afternoon with friends
shadowgovt 16 hours ago [-]
They could do it live-action with friends (that would also be funny to see), but it kind of misses the meta-joke that the original was made with 90% computer automation. The joke is "a machine made this video tweny-ish years ago and here's what it looks like if you do that now."
graypegg 15 hours ago [-]
That is true haha, I think I'm mostly thinking about what the GP comment mentioned, in that it just generating this replaces what otherwise would've been a fun afternoon with friends.
efficax 20 hours ago [-]
the deadpan emotionless delivery of the original memes are an important part of their humor. this remaster looks fancy but loses the entire spirit of the thing
cflewis 18 hours ago [-]
"only if you are Yahoo!" is one of the best line reads of all time.
shadowgovt 16 hours ago [-]
There will always be a special place in my heart for the stilted "do you. do you think your users are scum."
dekhn 15 hours ago [-]
for me it's "nobody has borgmon readability" and "I forgot how to count that low".
mbleigh 9 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it does lose something in the more realistic performances. Was still fun to play with though!
underdeserver 18 hours ago [-]
It's differently good. Impressive (but less funny).
morshu9001 19 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the only way this is funnier is when the AI does something weird
donalhunt 19 hours ago [-]
blooper reel is gold.
1970-01-01 18 hours ago [-]
Agreed. It's completely lost its original charm. This is AI slop.
17 hours ago [-]
parpfish 21 hours ago [-]
I would have kicked up the 4d3d3d3.
Maybe thrown in a hat wobble.
flannell 4 hours ago [-]
“Paul, your wife is calling. It is an emergency.”
“Later. We’ve got a lot of work to do”
fugalfervor 20 hours ago [-]
I thought/hoped that's what this thread was about.
ares623 17 hours ago [-]
Different vegetable. But that was a prescient vision of modern AI.
wpm 14 hours ago [-]
Computer, load up Celery Man.
Now that I think of it, that skit was incredibly prescient. You can literally ask Gemini for more hat wobble now.
bigyabai 17 hours ago [-]
Now, Tayne I can get into.
haburka 22 hours ago [-]
I do wish they updated this to 2026 google! I don’t think it would be nearly as interesting though since they do get rid of most red tape but since everything is enterprise scale, it’s never easy.
hiddencost 20 hours ago [-]
Huh?
The bureaucracy is way worse. BCID requirements. MDBs that take 4+ hours to roll out. The Byzantine array of different MDB group types, often with two party control. GDPR company compliance. Tagging proto fields with provenance. Documents are private by default now. Most support happens in chat groups, and is if you're not at deepmind your help requests are getting ignored.
Spending a month filing GUTS tickets to get your intern access to basic tools. XManager idle pruning. GCP automated boq setup/teardown tools usually fail and you have to fall back to getting support from a contractor 12 time zones away.
dmoy 18 hours ago [-]
I wish that the remake focused on the new bureaucracy stuff (or even new technical stuff), instead of being a near 1-for-1 rehash of the old one. E.g. it's not like anyone is being recommended to serve out of a bigtable for the last decade or whatever. But it's also not like the replacement(s) are problem-free when it comes to quota, etc.
summerlight 5 hours ago [-]
Don't forget to mention automatic enrollment of your production group into access-on-demand. Any minor access on the production now requires the group manager's approval. I had a fun time with some production fire where only director level folks can approve the access. Even funnier thing is that this "refactor" was done without any prior notice.
kridsdale3 12 hours ago [-]
This guy Googles.
awalsh128 11 hours ago [-]
This is only an issue when you need to migrate services. I can't get into details but much of this isn't a problem anymore.
jeffbee 17 hours ago [-]
The bureaucracy is why people trust Google with their data. I wouldn't use a Google if I thought they didn't have BCID and proto field provenance and the rest of it.
morshu9001 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's also different from the pointless technical complexity that this video is about. But that exists too. Could've talked about how spinning up a cronjob the new way takes 2 weeks regardless of what it's doing, how there's a proliferation of different config languages, or how everything is deprecated / not ready still.
defen 15 hours ago [-]
How are you supposed to know that if you're evaluating whether to use a tool / service?
kridsdale3 12 hours ago [-]
I wish I had an answer for you. I spend at least half of the past year trying to make that decision. The internal LLM that can read all the docs and code, you'd think, could get the context to know what the optimal state is, but it easily gets confused by out of date documentation and recommends paths that are going to be marked as "why didn't you use the new thing?" at review time, OR it builds out a solution using "oh, this isn't ready for use yet" parts.
jeffbee 15 hours ago [-]
You could just read their whitepapers and accept them at face value. What other major SaaS providers are publishing about their technical countermeasures against insider risk?
If a company publishes loads of articles about how they have technical controls for privacy and security, through encryption and compartmentalization and code review and build provenance and so forth, and all the people who work/worked at said company are always whining about how onerous those processes are, then what gives you reason to doubt it?
shadowgovt 16 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Google long ago passed the event horizon where they could keep pretending they were not mission-critical infrastructure for a significant portion of their users, and (from privacy to reliability) I'm glad they've put in structure to enforce acting like it, even if that means they no longer feel like working at a startup.
Everyone who wants to work at a startup knows where to find the rest of Silicon Valley (and Austin and etc.). I wish them the best and I look forward to reading their data-breach disclosures if they get popular enough for anyone to care about what they're doing.
kridsdale3 12 hours ago [-]
I was at Meta when it was forced by the FTC to start adding this compliance stuff. It SUCKED to retrofit everything.
Now I'm at google, and onboarded on to the version of the infra that already went through that, and I can take it all at face value. It is a PAIN still, but this is the reality of a system that interfaces with O(10^8) users, O(10^2) governments.
pjjw 19 hours ago [-]
bless, but hearing people say this version is "better" makes me want to walk into the sea.
ahoka 22 hours ago [-]
I want to see MongoDB is webscale as a sequel.
calmbonsai 16 hours ago [-]
I wonder if Broccoli Man was inspired by Paul Rudd's Celery Man.
btown 16 hours ago [-]
More likely by the legendary Mongo DB Is Web Scale, which just turned 15 years old!
The jankiness of the original had a lot of charm, almost selling the dystopian absurdity of trying to deploy a service via the janky voice and slightly desync'd audio and animation. I don't think it's just nostalgia, because I felt the same way watching it the first time all those years ago.
I think AI slop is decidedly different, because it just doesn't have the charm. I don't know if I can yet decompose exactly why that is.
This is 100% AI slop, cool story and all but I'd 100 times rather see a very poorly drawn 2007 animation than any of this.
swiftcoder 20 hours ago [-]
Tbf, the original is also slop (albeit of the pre-AI variety)
jesucresta 20 hours ago [-]
no is not, the original is full of personality and ideas even if its poorly drawn and kitsch.
Rebelgecko 17 hours ago [-]
Xtranormal was slop, you just plugged in a script and chose premade character models
shadowgovt 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, but also literally AI slop. Stock characters auto-puppeted to a text script with text-to-voice run across it. The artist's input was writing the text and signing off on the final auto-generated product. The reason the two characters in the video are weird superheroes is those were the available stock characters in the XtraNormal.com service he used.
After all, the creator didn't want to be an professinal full-time animator, he just wanted to animate three minutes.
jesucresta 19 hours ago [-]
It is only "literally AI slop" if you widen the definition to include anything made using computers. That is not an honest take on what content made with AI is.
The original author chose those assets and that background, other people made those assets on the first place and had to take a ton of tiny creative choices that changed the final thing and help transmit ideas and feelings (of uncanniness, vulgarity, surrealism, whatever).
Anyone can tell the difference between one and the other.
morshu9001 19 hours ago [-]
Text to speech in the 2000s would be considered AI
caymanjim 18 hours ago [-]
The things we called AI back then weren't AI. The things we call AI now aren't AI either. The definition remains wide.
SoftTalker 18 hours ago [-]
Sounds like Humpty-Dumpty.
darkwater 19 hours ago [-]
> Yes, but also literally AI slop. Stock characters auto-puppeted to a text script with text-to-voice run across it.
Maybe I'm wrong but I would say that the slop feeling of the original version was a deliberate decision and part of its charm. That kind of video and voices were a meme back then, IIRC.
swiftcoder 17 hours ago [-]
As is the slop feeling of the current, no doubt. I don't think that changes it being "slop" in the sense of low-effort and mostly generated by machine learning (rather than hand-edited like a machinima)
hbn 19 hours ago [-]
If the tech stack used to make that video makes it "AI slop" then every video game cutscene is AI slop.
parpfish 18 hours ago [-]
video game cutscenes usually involve real artists designing and animating the characters, not just using preset stock characters
shadowgovt 16 hours ago [-]
Most videogame cutscenes (well, for AAA games; I'm going to ignore the wide, worthy, and growing ecosystem of "I had an idea and made it in Unity with purchased assets") use bespoke model and texture assets, motion-capture human animation, and voice acting.
None of that is what an Xtranormal auto-puppet show is about.
hbn 14 hours ago [-]
Motion capture in bigger budget games only started to become common around the Xbox 360/PS3 generation. Go back to prior generations and it was a lot of "2 models facing each other and their mouths wiggle up and down while audio files play"
Pretty much exactly what you see in that video.
swiftcoder 4 hours ago [-]
The difference being that someone actually had to record said audiofiles, and animate the mouths wiggling. The "slop"-ness is defined by the inputs, not the outputs.
lanyard-textile 19 hours ago [-]
Oh we’re at this stage of AI huh :)
“No it was always slop!!!! Nyeh!”
swiftcoder 17 hours ago [-]
Feeding text into a machine-learning based app that creates low-effort audio and visuals? Yeah, that's always been slop. I don't use "slop" in a particularly negative sense here, it is what it is
lanyard-textile 12 hours ago [-]
It’s an intriguing use of the word I’ll admit — I think it’s a bit of a loaded term atm though. Overwhelmingly negative, anecdotally.
swiftcoder 4 hours ago [-]
> Overwhelmingly negative, anecdotally
I don't think it is, actually? "Friend-slop" is a super-popular genre of video game right now (for example, indie smash-hit PEAK), typically characterised by low-friction co-op experiences with a low-fi and/or kit-bashed aesthetic
im3w1l 6 hours ago [-]
This didn't capture the emotional tone as I perceived it in the original. I thought Brocoliman was supposed to be someone who had drunk the cool-aid and truly believed in how easy all those steps were and just couldn't understand how anyone could have any issues at all with them unless they were an idiot.
ctippett 21 hours ago [-]
This is very well done.
I wouldn't and don't consider this to be AI slop. The author's own reflection captures perfectly my own feelings on the matter... intent does matter.
I think what gets lost in a lot of the AI media discussion is that intent matters. I find auto-generated slop-farm TikToks just as dystopic as the most fervent doomer, but I also remember when I was a 10-year-old kid making movies with my parents’ VHS camcorder and how much fun I would have had learning how to make things if I’d had tools like this.
tantalor 21 hours ago [-]
According to Kagi, all AI generated content is slop.
That's a slippery slope, a really slippery slope, especially when it comes to still images. I don't believe video is any different -- intent does matter.
freediver 18 hours ago [-]
That is not how Kagi looks at it.
We are marking domains as slop if they contain mostly AI generated content. It is hard to say if a single piece of AI generated content is slop or not (there is useful AI generated content too). But if all the content on a domain is AI generated, it is likely something that people would not like in their results.
shadowgovt 21 hours ago [-]
Kagi is entitled to their opinion. Perhaps worth noting is by that metric the original Broccoli Man video is also slop; it was generated using stock characters, voice synthesis, and auto puppeteering. The only creative input the original "artist" had was writing the text script and signing off on the final output.
Personal opinion, using modern AI slop generation to recreate AI slop from a previous generation of the technology is pretty good art.
orbital-decay 20 hours ago [-]
Most meme-worthy content is actual low effort slop. That's the reality of the most recent two decades.
setheron 19 hours ago [-]
Is the other character a fox because that's Meta mascot too?
kridsdale3 12 hours ago [-]
The original video is older than that.
ceph_ 8 hours ago [-]
Red panda not fox
moandcompany 17 hours ago [-]
Does anyone miss Meatless Mondays?
bistro 3 hours ago [-]
And the ensuing throwing out forks protest?
SpaceManNabs 18 hours ago [-]
Kinda shocked at how much editing they had to do.
You'd think AI would make it easier to splice together individual clips, but I haven't find a tool that does that well yet. Opus seems tailored for doing fine tuning on long form content like podcasts.
stuaxo 16 hours ago [-]
While some stuff can generated, there is a long way to go.
alan-jordan13 19 hours ago [-]
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Barry-Perkins 21 hours ago [-]
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John-Tony 21 hours ago [-]
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tonetheman 14 hours ago [-]
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glimshe 22 hours ago [-]
Very cool! I'd be perfectly happy to watch videos that combine human creativity and choice with AI. I don't consider this kind of video "slop". Once the glitches are eliminated, this workflow will be unstoppable.
windexh8er 21 hours ago [-]
> Once the glitches are eliminated, this workflow will be unstoppable.
"... unstoppable." - What? I'm genuinely curious. Do you think this type of video is enjoyable? Maybe one, or even two like this is palatable - but I don't see anything 1) interesting or new 2) that would make me want to watch this by choice.
And when everyone is swimming in a sea of this type of work I don't think most people will enjoy it, either. It's also too bad we aren't more cognizant of how we got here, either. All of the artists work that was stolen to generate those images and then the watt hours burned. I'm not saying these types of offerings are completely for naught, but I do think some of these services should be forced to put a few pre or post pended frames that show (like nutrition facts) the environmental impact including model inference and that copyright was violated to make it.
cameronh90 20 hours ago [-]
I personally quite enjoy the Gossip Goblin cyberpunk cycle of humanity videos (can find them on reddit/tiktok/yt/elsewhere).
Most of the creativity is clearly from the human driving the AI, but I suspect it would have been borderline impossible to make something like that as an individual without AI.
wvbdmp 20 hours ago [-]
Individuals have been doing this exact thing without AI for years, only better, with actual comedic timing, by just playing both parts. Sometimes they don’t even change clothes and it’s perfectly understandable. It’s a whole meme at this point that a towel on the head of a man signifies a female character, for example. You can find plenty of this on tiktok or instagram.
cameronh90 20 hours ago [-]
At least for my enjoyment of the Gossip Goblin videos, the world and aesthetics are pretty critical to it. I wouldn't find it at all compelling if it was just someone in their kitchen playing it themselves. I do like those videos with people playing both parts in other contexts (comedy particularly), but for other types of work, the AI generated videos are doing something that can't really be done yourself unless you become a Blender virtuoso.
bigyabai 15 hours ago [-]
Blender "virtuoso" is pushing things a bit far. I can teach someone to keyframe a rigged model in 10 minutes, and record voice acting in another 15. All-in-all, it might actually be faster to make these skits in Blender if you exclude modelling and render time.
stuaxo 16 hours ago [-]
I couldn't make it through the video, something about this sort of thing is very unenjoyable to watch.
I use LLMs a lot and I like older weird AI generated stuff, but outside the uncanny valley... no.
tantalor 21 hours ago [-]
> I don't see anything interesting or new
What I find so interesting about this is how much is NOT new. It is a highly faithful reproduction of the beloved original.
The difference is the voices and visuals are much higher quality, and there are some added effects and cutaways that are nice touches.
I would still share the original video because it is a useful cultural artifact and teaching tool (as ridiculous as it is), and I would be happy to share this version at the same time, just because it is higher quality.
Forgeties79 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah that was actually really funny to watch. And when you see some of the “decisions“ the AI tool makes - especially when they border on the bizarre - it adds another layer to the humor. Strange pauses or proximity/eyeline choices and such that aren’t wrong but definitely a bit weird or awkward
Rendered at 10:26:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
>In no world would I ever have put together a real cast and crew to remake a 15 year old inside joke video for Googlers, but I was able to make it with AI.
BUT IT DID !! and part of the charm is that this involved real people talking, mutual understanding and a shared culture. That world existed it can still exist unless we surrender to the depravity of conformity and comfortability.
In fact, the overtly robotic voices added to the humor of the original, IMO. It was lost in this translation.
AI has raised the bar, in terms of making it more difficult to create the trust necessary for people to be willing to open themselves up to that connection.
Any assertion that the world in which Broccoli Man was created was fundamentally different (in terms of "relying on someone else's framework to do a low-effort meme") from today is nostaglia. In fact, I suspect mbleigh spent more time on making the recreation work than was spent on the original Broccoli Man video.
3 people, the phone with the best camera across those 3 people, and some costumes that aren't THAT had to recreate? Honestly could even skip the costumes and just print out two A4 sheets with orange bamboo shoots and broccoli and tape them to your shirt and I would honestly get a better kick out of that. It's fun to make stuff with friends, even if it's a bit crap!
Saying that, I don't think anyone making something with AI discourages anyone else from doing something with the joke, so I think all this has really replaced is a video the author would not have made otherwise... but they should try anyway! They're missing out on what would be a fun afternoon with friends
“Later. We’ve got a lot of work to do”
Now that I think of it, that skit was incredibly prescient. You can literally ask Gemini for more hat wobble now.
The bureaucracy is way worse. BCID requirements. MDBs that take 4+ hours to roll out. The Byzantine array of different MDB group types, often with two party control. GDPR company compliance. Tagging proto fields with provenance. Documents are private by default now. Most support happens in chat groups, and is if you're not at deepmind your help requests are getting ignored. Spending a month filing GUTS tickets to get your intern access to basic tools. XManager idle pruning. GCP automated boq setup/teardown tools usually fail and you have to fall back to getting support from a contractor 12 time zones away.
If a company publishes loads of articles about how they have technical controls for privacy and security, through encryption and compartmentalization and code review and build provenance and so forth, and all the people who work/worked at said company are always whining about how onerous those processes are, then what gives you reason to doubt it?
Everyone who wants to work at a startup knows where to find the rest of Silicon Valley (and Austin and etc.). I wish them the best and I look forward to reading their data-breach disclosures if they get popular enough for anyone to care about what they're doing.
Now I'm at google, and onboarded on to the version of the infra that already went through that, and I can take it all at face value. It is a PAIN still, but this is the reality of a system that interfaces with O(10^8) users, O(10^2) governments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
I think AI slop is decidedly different, because it just doesn't have the charm. I don't know if I can yet decompose exactly why that is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
After all, the creator didn't want to be an professinal full-time animator, he just wanted to animate three minutes.
The original author chose those assets and that background, other people made those assets on the first place and had to take a ton of tiny creative choices that changed the final thing and help transmit ideas and feelings (of uncanniness, vulgarity, surrealism, whatever).
Anyone can tell the difference between one and the other.
Maybe I'm wrong but I would say that the slop feeling of the original version was a deliberate decision and part of its charm. That kind of video and voices were a meme back then, IIRC.
None of that is what an Xtranormal auto-puppet show is about.
Pretty much exactly what you see in that video.
“No it was always slop!!!! Nyeh!”
I don't think it is, actually? "Friend-slop" is a super-popular genre of video game right now (for example, indie smash-hit PEAK), typically characterised by low-friction co-op experiences with a low-fi and/or kit-bashed aesthetic
I wouldn't and don't consider this to be AI slop. The author's own reflection captures perfectly my own feelings on the matter... intent does matter.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html#what-is-co...
We are marking domains as slop if they contain mostly AI generated content. It is hard to say if a single piece of AI generated content is slop or not (there is useful AI generated content too). But if all the content on a domain is AI generated, it is likely something that people would not like in their results.
Personal opinion, using modern AI slop generation to recreate AI slop from a previous generation of the technology is pretty good art.
You'd think AI would make it easier to splice together individual clips, but I haven't find a tool that does that well yet. Opus seems tailored for doing fine tuning on long form content like podcasts.
"... unstoppable." - What? I'm genuinely curious. Do you think this type of video is enjoyable? Maybe one, or even two like this is palatable - but I don't see anything 1) interesting or new 2) that would make me want to watch this by choice.
And when everyone is swimming in a sea of this type of work I don't think most people will enjoy it, either. It's also too bad we aren't more cognizant of how we got here, either. All of the artists work that was stolen to generate those images and then the watt hours burned. I'm not saying these types of offerings are completely for naught, but I do think some of these services should be forced to put a few pre or post pended frames that show (like nutrition facts) the environmental impact including model inference and that copyright was violated to make it.
Most of the creativity is clearly from the human driving the AI, but I suspect it would have been borderline impossible to make something like that as an individual without AI.
I use LLMs a lot and I like older weird AI generated stuff, but outside the uncanny valley... no.
What I find so interesting about this is how much is NOT new. It is a highly faithful reproduction of the beloved original.
The difference is the voices and visuals are much higher quality, and there are some added effects and cutaways that are nice touches.
I would still share the original video because it is a useful cultural artifact and teaching tool (as ridiculous as it is), and I would be happy to share this version at the same time, just because it is higher quality.